


Visitation [Paying Respects]

by jettiebettie



Category: Death Note, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Post-Another Note, Pre-Series, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7835989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jettiebettie/pseuds/jettiebettie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't meant to become a habit. Naomi certainly didn't want it to be misconstrued as obsession, because that excuse fizzled out mere months after the investigation.</p><p>So some questions were still left half-answered, and honestly that was just life. You couldn't always get the end result you wanted, something Naomi had learned early in her career and had grown to except. You can fight to discover the truth for so long before the truth became irrelevant, pointless. That's when you know it's time to move on. And yet she still comes, once every month or so, to this same facility with its high walls and cameras and guards and him.</p><p>No. It wasn't so much obsession as it was familiarity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitation [Paying Respects]

_"Justice has more power than anything else."_

_"Power? By power... you mean strength?"_

_"No. I mean kindness."_

-

It wasn't meant to become a habit. Naomi certainly didn't want it to be misconstrued as obsession, because that excuse fizzled out mere months after the investigation.

So some questions were still left half-answered, and honestly that was just life. You couldn't always get the end result you wanted, something Naomi had learned early in her career and had grown to accept. You can fight to discover the truth for so long before the truth became irrelevant, pointless even. That's when you know it's time to move on. And yet she still comes, once every month or so, to this same facility with its high walls and cameras and guards and _him_.

No. It wasn't so much obsession as it was familiarity. Spend enough time questioning someone in a hospital bed, spend enough time playing _sick games_ with a person, and such a connection is hard to avoid. She knew she would gain nothing from repeat visits, even stopped pressing for answers - for his motivations - four visits in. Nothing to keep coming back to with the sole exception being that she was the only one who did, and shouldn't even someone like this man see a familiar face every now and then? It was a kindness, the only one she granted him.

"Misora, you're looking lovely, as always." 

Blinking herself out of her daze, Naomi glances up as Beyond Birthday is brought into the visitation room. It being a maximum security prison, the room is relatively small with no windows and a guard posted in each corner. They were used to silent company during their talks. Naomi waits for the guards to latch Beyond's chains to the floor and bolted-down table before she speaks.

"And you... seem well," she answers. It's the best she can offer. Though his burns have long since healed, they are still chilling to see, and it's easy for her to imagine they still cause him pain, though that's most likely false. The black hair that had mostly burned off had grown back a dark brown. Even through the scars, the lack of makeup contouring his face makes him appear very different from the man she worked with (against) briefly, and even his posture is not so terrible. By now she has known Beyond much longer than she knew Ryuzaki. He gives her a breath of a laugh and shrugs one shoulder.

"As much as can be expected, I suppose. Come to regale me with more news of this budding Kira phenomenon? Perhaps I could be more than a soundboard this time around, though you do so well on your own."

Naomi irritably purses her lips. 

"I'm aware how much of our investigation hinged on _my_ deduction," she says with a small amount of spite, remembering clearly how Ryuzaki led her from clue to clue, metaphorically holding her hand, theory to theory.

"Don't cut yourself so short, Misora!" Beyond insists. "Were it not for your deductive abilities, I would be dead. I would have _won_." In the beginning, she had asked for him to clarify. In the beginning, he had said those words with malice. Now, so much time later, there is an air of acceptance to his voice, something not unlike respect. It makes Naomi uneasy, but then again, Beyond had always been an unsettling focal point in her life.

"Nothing new as of yet," she says, putting them back on topic. She bites her cheek and stares at the spot in front of Beyond's restrained hands, debating, before she says, "I think _he_ might be called in to investigate, if he hasn't already taken it upon himself to do so." There's a moment of silence before she finally looks up and almost startles when she sees dark eyes focused intently on her, so piercing that she has to hold her breath to get her fight-or-flight instincts under control. 

"You're not here to talk about him, are you, Misora? About L. Nor Kira, for that matter. Curious, as strange cases you are not officially involved with seem to be standard for our brief chats. What, then, brings you to..." His eyes had begun to move about her face as he spoke, as if trying to find some clue. Said clue was not in her countenance but the way she absently rubbed her engagement ring and his voice trails off when he sees it. Naomi immediately takes her hand away from her ring, laying both flat on the table, as still as she can keep them. And for the first time that she has known him - known Beyond - for the _honest-to-God_ first time... he looks confused. Confused and, dare she imagine it, afraid. "Has the big day arrived? Are you perhaps going on a honeymoon trip?" he asks slowly, eyes on her ring. "One that might delay your next visit?" Suddenly filled with something not unlike nervous reluctance, she takes a slow, calming breath before she answers.

"This will be my last visit, Beyond." 

She jumps at the sudden, metallic sound of the chains pulling taunt against the iron ring on the table. Two of the guards rush forward, hands on Beyond's shoulders to push him back in his chair, but his burn scarred hands are still reaching out for her. Fear has made its spike through her system, but she quickly reins herself in. The hands are not futilely stretched out for her neck, tense and angry, rather they at such an angle that she can only assume he meant to grab her own. A guard uses one large hand to force down Beyond's and the other looks ready to haul him off. 

"W-wait!" she tells them. They stop and give her a look, but they do not step away. "Please, just... I have five more minutes. It's fine. We're fine." It takes a moment and a nod from another guard still posted in a corner, but they eventually back off, leaving Beyond to slump back in his chair. "Everything is fine," she says again, looking to Beyond as if asking him to agree with her, but he's not looking her in the eye anymore, rather at some point just above her head.

"Does dear husband not fancy Los Angeles?" he asks quietly, eyes finally trailing to her face. She doesn't bother to correct him, doesn't say that Raye is her fiance, not her husband just yet. Instead she squares her shoulders and presses on. 

"It's not just a matter of moving. I'm quitting the FBI. In a few days, I will no longer be an agent and-"

"You will no longer be permitted these visitations," Beyond finishes for her.

"... Correct." And, for whatever reason, she feels the need to explain. "He worries. And when we're married, I'll be-"

"A waste."

"Excuse me?" 

Beyond looks from her to her ring. His face has become calm once more but his eyes carry a hatred she hasn't seen since his hospitalization. 

"I said it is a _waste_ ," he repeats. "Giving up your career, throwing away your potential, for what exactly? To be the perfect housewife?" His words, once polite if slightly condescending, have turned bitter and cold. She clenches her fists as he continues. "And how long will that last, I wonder. How long will you submit to such a weak willed and soft minded-"

"How I choose to live my life is of no concern to the likes of you!" Naomi fires back. Silence between them again as both take a moment to right themselves mentally. Naomi is sure she's still visibly angry, but Beyond has grown expressionless again, avoiding her glare by looking just above her head. 

"Such little time we already had left," he says in almost a whisper before closing his eyes. "And you are here to cut it even shorter. You are a cruel woman, Naomi."

She ignores the majority of his bizarre statement, because never in her memory can she recall him being so familiar with her. But she supposes, by this point, they are as such with one another. It's the only thing that brings her back to this place, their strange familiarity. A guard signals to her that time is almost up and she finds herself reeling; doesn't she have more to say, shouldn't she being thinking of one last question, of a final remark? But her mind is blank. No, not blank. Filled with half-formed thoughts and theories and emotions that actively refuse to make anything of themselves. 

"Do be careful out there in the world, Misora," Beyond says as she moves to stand from her chair. "Watch yourself in those dark alleys, be on your guard. For me." Naomi feels the anger seep out of her.

"I don't owe you anything, Beyond," she says calmly and without malice, simply stating fact. He inclines his head to concede her point, but looks at her with eerily knowing eyes.

"Nothing but a farewell, it would seem." There's nothing she can find to say to that. "All the same, wasted potential is not necessarily lost potential. You are strong and beautiful, intelligent. If anyone can turn the tide of fate, I imagine it would be you. Were I not here, I would try _for_ you. Alas." His smile is facetious as he holds up his restrained hands as far as the chain allows. Naomi again feels like she did during those days of their investigation; confused and irritable, pulled along, almost dragged, yet on the cusp of inspiration and _knowing_.

Surprisingly, it is the knowing she dreads most. 

"Goodbye, Beyond," she says, taking in that scarred face one last time as she turns to leave through the door opened by a guard. 

"Goodbye, Naomi Misora. I'm glad to have met you."

-

A few weeks in the future, Beyond Birthday will be found in his cell, dead of a heart attack, just one of many of Kira's victims. Naomi will take the time to wonder if this is what he meant by time cut short. In her gut, she'll know it's not.

A few weeks after that, Naomi will meet a charming young man in the middle of a vendetta driven investigation, her fate, regrettably, unchanged.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Halfway through writing this, I realized I had made a blunder. Naomi's death clock should not have been ticking down to when she was killed by the Death Note. Light's use of the Death Note to facilitate her suicide would have cut off any time she had left. BUT THEN I HAD A THOUGHT. As much as I absolutely loathe that fact that Naomi dies, I can't help but feel it was fated (by the narrative). Naomi's statistics say her Luck is 1/10. Girl was born unlucky. Who WAS born lucky? Light fucking Yagami. SO MUCH could have and should have gone wrong that day for him, AND YET things fell into place just so. They fell into place perfectly for Naomi to have been intercepted by Light. And whether or not he used the Death Note, as soon as she unwittingly identified herself as a threat, her death was sealed, because there was no way Light was going to let her live.
> 
> So this is my train of thought in keeping that small plot thread in the above story. Naomi Misora was fated to die by whatever means Light Yagami could find, which just so happened to be the Death Note.
> 
> (I finished Another Note today and came away with the absolute belief that Beyond had the BIGGEST crush on Naomi. I feel you, bro. And I actually found the book to be quite funny, despite the melancholy tone of this fic, but hey I'm a little bitter because it made me love them a little and they are both SUPER DOOMED by canon. I had wanted to add a little bit where Beyond realizes that he only ever used his eyes to see people's deaths to their bloody end, never to try and keep one from happening, that with Naomi he would want to try, but that would have taken the narrative from Naomi's perspective and I was reluctant to do that.)


End file.
